FIVE
Chief Inspector Gamache picked up the stack of papers just inside the yellow police cordon and handed them to Clara.
“I’m sure the critics loved your show,” he said.
“Why, oh why aren’t you an art critic instead of wasting your time in such a trivial profession?” Clara asked.
“Dreadful waste of a life, I agree,” smiled the Chief.
“Well,” she looked down at the papers, “I guess I can’t count on another body showing up. I might just have to read these now.”
She looked around. Peter had gone inside and Clara wondered if she should too. To read the reviews in peace and quiet. In secret.
Instead, she thanked Gamache and walked toward the bistro, hugging the heavy papers to her chest. She could see Olivier out on the terrasse, serving drinks. Monsieur Beliveau sat at a table, with its blue and white sun umbrella, sipping a Cinzano and reading the Sunday newspapers.
Indeed all the tables were taken, filled with villagers and friends enjoying a lazy Sunday brunch. As she appeared most eyes turned to her.
Then looked away.
And she felt a stab of rage. Not at these people, but at Lillian. Who’d taken the biggest day of Clara’s professional life and done this. So that instead of smiling and waving and commenting on the big celebrations, now people turned away. Clara’s triumph stolen, yet again, by Lillian.
She looked at the grocer, Monsieur Beliveau, who quickly dropped his eyes.
As did Clara.
When she raised them again a moment later she almost leapt out of her skin. Olivier was standing within inches of her, holding two glasses.
“Shit,” she exhaled.
“Shandies,” he said. “Made with ginger beer and pale ale, as you like them.”
Clara looked from him to the glasses then back to Olivier. A slight breeze picked at his thinning blond hair. Even with an apron around his slender body he managed to look sophisticated and relaxed. But Clara remembered the look they’d exchanged while kneeling in the corridor of the Musée d’Art Contemporain.
“That was fast,” she said.
“Well, they were actually meant for someone else, but I judged it was an emergency.”
“That obvious?” smiled Clara.
“Hard not to be, when a body appears at your place. I know.”
“Yes,” said Clara. “You do know.”
Olivier indicated the bench on the village green and they walked over to it. Clara dropped the heavy newspapers and they hit the bench with a thump, as did she.
Clara accepted a shandy from Olivier and they sat side-by-side, their backs to the bistro, to the people, to the crime scene. To the searching eyes and averted eyes.
“How’re you doing?” asked Olivier. He’d almost asked if she was all right, but of course she wasn’t.
“I wish I could say. Lillian alive in our back garden would have been a shock, but Lillian dead is inconceivable.”
“Who was she?”
“A friend from long ago. But no longer a friend. We had a falling out.”
Clara didn’t say more, and Olivier didn’t ask. They sipped their drinks and sat in the shade of the three huge pine trees that soared over them, over the village.
“How was it seeing Gamache again?” asked Clara.
Olivier paused to consider, then he smiled. He looked boyish and young. Far younger than his thirty-eight years. “Not very comfortable. Do you think he noticed?”
“I think it’s just possible,” said Clara, and squeezed Olivier’s hand. “You haven’t forgiven him?”
“Could you?”
Now it was Clara’s turn to pause. Not to reflect on her answer. She knew it. But on whether she should say it.
“We forgave you,” she finally said and hoped her tone was gentle enough, soft enough. That the words wouldn’t feel as barbed as they could. But still she felt Olivier stiffen, withdraw. Not physically, but there seemed an emotional step back.
“Have you?” he said at last. And his tone was soft too. It wasn’t an accusation, more a wonderment. As though it was something he quietly asked himself every day.
Was he forgiven. Yet.
True, he hadn’t murdered the Hermit. But he’d betrayed him. Stolen from him. Taken everything the delusional recluse had offered. And some he hadn’t. Olivier had taken everything from the fragile old man. Including his freedom. Imprisoning him in the log cabin, with cruel words.
And when it had all come out, at his trial, he’d seen the looks on their faces.
As though they were suddenly staring at a stranger. A monster in their midst.
“What makes you think we haven’t forgiven you?” asked Clara.
“Well, Ruth for one.”
“Oh, come on,” laughed Clara. “She’s always called you a dick-head.”
“True. But you know what she calls me now?”
“What?” she asked with a grin.
“Olivier.”
Clara’s grin slowly faded.
“You know,” said Olivier, “I thought prison would be the worst. The humiliations, the terror. It’s amazing what you can get used to. Even now those memories are fading. No, not really fading, but they’re more in my head now. Not so much here.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “But you know what doesn’t go away?”
Clara shook her head and steeled herself. “Tell me.”
She didn’t want what Olivier was offering. Some scalded memory. Of a gay man in prison. A good man, in prison. God knew, he was flawed. More than most, perhaps. But his punishment had far outstripped the crime.
Clara didn’t think she could stand to hear the best part of being in prison, and now she was about to hear the worst. But he had to tell it. And Clara had to listen.
“It’s not the trial, not even prison.” Olivier looked at her with sad eyes. “Do you know what wakes me up at two in the morning with a panic attack?”
Clara waited, feeling her own heart pounding.
“It was here. After I’d been released. It was walking from the car with Beauvoir and Gamache. That long walk across the snow to the bistro.”
Clara stared at her friend, not quite understanding. How could the memory of coming home to Three Pines possibly be more frightening than being locked behind bars?
She remembered that day clearly. It had been a Sunday afternoon in February. Another crisp, cold winter day. She and Myrna and Ruth and Peter and most of the village had been snug inside the bistro, having café au laits and talking. She’d been chatting with Myrna when she’d noticed Gabri had grown uncharacteristically quiet and was staring out the windows. Then she’d looked. Children were skating on the pond, playing a pick-up game of hockey. Other kids were tobogganing, having snowball fights, building forts. Down rue du Moulin she saw the familiar Volvo drive slowly into Three Pines. It parked by the village green. Three men, wrapped in heavy parkas, got out of the vehicle. They paused, then slowly walked the few paces to the bistro.
Gabri had stood up, almost knocking over his coffee mug. Then the entire bistro had grown quiet, as all eyes followed Gabri’s stare. They watched the three figures. It was almost as though the pines had come alive and were approaching.
Clara said nothing and waited for Olivier to continue.
“I know it was just a few yards, really,” he finally said. “But the bistro seemed so far away. It was freezing cold, the kind that goes right through your coat. Our boots on the snow sounded so loud, crunching and squealing, like we were stepping on something alive, and hurting it.”
Olivier paused, and narrowed his eyes again.
“I could see everyone inside. I could see the logs burning in the fireplace. I could see the frost on the windowpanes.”
As he spoke Clara could see them too, through his eyes.
“I haven’t even told Gabri this, I didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want him to take it the wrong way. When we were walking toward the bistro I almost stopped. Almost asked them to drive me somewhere else, anywhere else.”
“Why?” Clara’s voice had dropped to a whisper.
“Because I was terrified. More afraid than I’d ever been in my life. More afraid even than in prison.”
“Afraid of what?”
Once again Olivier felt the bitter cold scraping his cheeks. Heard his feet shrieking on the hard snow. And saw the warm bistro through the mullioned windows. His friends and neighbors over drinks, talking. Laughing. The fire in the grate.
Safe and warm.
They on the inside. He on the outside, looking in.
And the closed door between him and everything he ever wanted.
He’d almost passed out from terror, and had he been able to find his voice he felt sure he’d have shouted at Gamache to take him back to Montréal. Drop him at some anonymous fleabag. Where he might not be accepted, but he wouldn’t be rejected.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me back. That I wouldn’t belong anymore.”
Olivier sighed and dropped his head. His eyes stared at the ground, taking in each blade of grass.
“Oh, God, Olivier,” said Clara, dropping her shandy onto the newspapers, where it fell over, soaking the pages. “Never.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, turning to her. Searching her face for reassurance.
“Absolutely. We really have let it go.”
He was quiet for a moment. They both watched as Ruth left her small cottage on the far side of the village green, opened her gate, and limped across to the other bench. Once there she looked at them and lifted her hand.
Please, thought Olivier. Give me the finger. Say something rude. Call me a fag, a queer. Dick-head.
“I know you say that, but I don’t really think you have.” He watched Ruth, but spoke to Clara. “Let it go, I mean.”
Ruth looked at Olivier. Hesitated. And waved.
Olivier paused, then nodded. Turning back to Clara he gave her a weary smile.
“Thank you for listening. If you ever want to talk about Lillian, or anything, you know where to find me.”
He waved, not toward the bistro, but toward Gabri, who was busy ignoring customers and chatting away with a friend. Olivier watched him with a smile.
Yes, thought Clara. Gabri is his home.
She picked up her sodden newspapers and began to walk across the village green when Olivier called after her. She turned and he caught up with her.
“Here. You spilled yours.” He held out his shandy.
“No, that’s OK. I’ll get something at Myrna’s.”
“Please?” he asked.
She looked at the partly drunk shandy, then at him. His kind, beseeching eyes. And she took the glass.
“Merci, mon beau Olivier.”
As she approached the village shops she thought about what Olivier had said.
And wondered if he was right. Maybe they hadn’t forgiven him.
Just then two men came out of the bistro and made their way slowly up rue du Moulin, toward the inn and spa at the top of the hill. She turned to watch them, surprised. That they were there. And that they were together.
Then her gaze shifted. To her own home. And a solitary figure standing by the corner of the house. Also watching the two men.
It was Chief Inspector Gamache.